Happy Birthday Johnny Appleseed!

We celebrated Johnny Appleseed's birthday and boy, was it delicious!

We learned that Johnny was a kind and giving man who took good care of his trees and supplied the early settlers with seeds so they could grow their own. I used this PowerPoint to introduce Johnny to the students.

We also learned about the parts of an apple by labeling this diagram of an apple.

Throughout the day I was making crock pot apple sauce so our room smelled quite yummy. Before we dug in and ate some we did a writing activity and wrote down the ingredients and cooking instructions for the homemade apple sauce. The template for the recipe can be found here.

You have to be wondering though...what IS the recipe?

What you will need:

crock pot

peeler

masher

about 15 apples (I have 17 students in my class and had some left over)

cinnamon

vanilla

Instructions:

Peel and slice all of the apples and place in a crock pot. Add as much cinnamon and vanilla as you'd like. Put the lid on and cook on high for 4-5 hours. Use masher to achieve the consistency you desire.

So simple and SO tasty! Here are some pictures of our class enjoying it:

Everyday Learners

These first graders know how to get down to business and work hard!

I love catching snap shots of them working and focusing.

Here are a few of them reviewing how to write the alphabet and doing a sort on short /e/ words.

Aren't they the best?!

Welcome To First Grade

I finally got to meet all of my fabulous first graders today! 

They are super cute and friendly and I can't wait to spend this next year with them.

Of course I had to take their first day picture:

I can't wait to teach these little ones and watch them grow.

Happy first day!

Field Day

Ahhh the great outdoors.

Thanks to the PTA, every grade level got to participate in a fun day of physical activities. We walked over to Ogden High and started with a game of shark and minnow:

Next, we played a little water balloon volley ball. Students paired up and held each end of a towel. Then, water balloons were tossed on each side. The goal was to catch the water balloon in a towel then toss it back over with the towel while not breaking the balloon. Some of us got a little bit wet in the process.

After that we headed over to do some bean bag tosses and tug-o-war. 

The last activity was the 50 meter dash.

They were quite tired at the end of it all and were happy to cool off with some popsicles.

It was a smile-filled, fun day.

Happy Campers

We've been doing a lot of learning around the theme of camping this week.

Activities include: 

• Have you ever gone camping? graphing activity
• Living and Non-living things camping themed sort and Venn-Diagram
•  Fishing for facts addition and subtraction activity
• Campfire story writing

 For the graphing activity I passed out a yes or no circle to each student based on whether they had gone camping or not and we graphed our responses onto a tent I made out of butcher paper:

The left side shows all the Yes responses and the right side shows the No responses.

We then graphed on a work sheet the results and answered questions such as: 

• How many students have gone camping?
• How many students have not gone camping?
• Has most of your class gone camping or not gone camping?
• How many more people have gone camping than not gone camping?
  (or vice versa based on the most popular choice)
• Have you gone camping?
• Do you like camping?

Later in the week we wrote campfire stories that covered many genres.We talked about fiction and non-fiction stories and after they were allowed to create any kind of story they wanted. It could be made up, real, scary, silly...anything! Once they edited and perfected their stories they each got a chance to share it around our classroom "campfire".

This camping theme got us in the mood for summer and all of the fun things that come along with it.